Gigabyte i-RAM
- Thread starter XMAN26
- Start date
Rainbow Man
Veteran
Well what is it?
Or don't I need to know if I haven't got one?
Peac.e
Or don't I need to know if I haven't got one?
Peac.e
A couple of the chaps over at SPCR had one.
The basic conclusion as I recall was that it while it sounds like a great idea, it doesn't really give you as much of a speed boost over a regular modern hard-drive as you might at first think, then there's the hassle of having to worry about losing battery power, and so on. Plus it's quite expensive, even with current memory prices. Great if you want 0dBA storage though
AFAIK it'll work in any PC with a PCI slot, not just Gigabyte mobos.
(Not speaking from personal experience, just from memory of what was said over there).
The basic conclusion as I recall was that it while it sounds like a great idea, it doesn't really give you as much of a speed boost over a regular modern hard-drive as you might at first think, then there's the hassle of having to worry about losing battery power, and so on. Plus it's quite expensive, even with current memory prices. Great if you want 0dBA storage though
AFAIK it'll work in any PC with a PCI slot, not just Gigabyte mobos.
(Not speaking from personal experience, just from memory of what was said over there).
A couple of the chaps over at SPCR had one.
The basic conclusion as I recall was that it while it sounds like a great idea, it doesn't really give you as much of a speed boost over a regular modern hard-drive as you might at first think, then there's the hassle of having to worry about losing battery power, and so on. Plus it's quite expensive, even with current memory prices. Great if you want 0dBA storage though
AFAIK it'll work in any PC with a PCI slot, not just Gigabyte mobos.
(Not speaking from personal experience, just from memory of what was said over there).
Thanks for the info. FYI, I was asking because I am concidering getting one for a swap file drive, not an actual data type drive. So power loss wont be an issue.
I wonder how they test that though. Running game benchmarks etc. properly won't help in anyway, but I would guess for example exiting a game and returning to the desktop will be way more smooth. Also XP has a habit of putting your programs of to swap space after some time to do other stuff while you aren't using the computer, which result in sluggish performance when you start a new "session". These are things hard to benchmark though, so it's hard to review IMhO. I would guess i-RAM could help quite a bit in those situations, but doesn't really makes sense cost wise with the price that were announced with the product launch. (At least not with the current memory prices)
The advantage of I-RAM are very good access times. But the speed should not be much different from a usual HDD because of the PCI bus. Still, you are right, this is something hard to benchmark. I guess they were using more programs at the same time then their RAM can handle, but I really don't remember.
The I-RAM only use the PCI bus for power, for data it use a SATA interface.
Now if they released I-RAM2 or similar with SATA 3gb interface and DDR2 memory I would get one instantly.
Blazkowicz
Legend
or they could do a PCIe 1x one which acts as its own controller, it would feel cleaner to me
By having i-RAM as my swap file, it will save my hard drive from the thrashing it takes while playing games like BF2, DDO, Q4, GRAW, Oblivion and a few others that use large cache file files which would reside in the swapfile during game play. Having already moved my swap file from my OS drive to a secondary drive, load time has already decreaded by 1/3 to 1/2. With an i-RAM as my swapfile, this should reduce even more. Plus it should help make my current and furutre hard drives last a good deal longer. And incase anyone is wondering, I have 2 80GB SATA 7200 drives. C and D respectfully.
Blazkowicz
Legend
beware of the 3GB limit on 32bit windows, I think can run into it with the combined RAM + swap.
2GB ram + 1GB swap on the I-RAM might be the ultimate 32bit windows rig (beware of SLI too which might bring down the memory limit to 2.75GB or maybe less)
another thing to consider might be the "readyboost" thing on Vista. while it appears ridiculous to me on a USB drive it might be a bit better on a I-drive, though maybe still a waste of dollars.
2GB ram + 1GB swap on the I-RAM might be the ultimate 32bit windows rig (beware of SLI too which might bring down the memory limit to 2.75GB or maybe less)
another thing to consider might be the "readyboost" thing on Vista. while it appears ridiculous to me on a USB drive it might be a bit better on a I-drive, though maybe still a waste of dollars.
At the moment, 1GB. I plan to do 2GB system and 1 or 2GB swap. I know, 2GB will be enough for anything in XP, but when I make the move to Vista late this year or early next, I dont want the machine to tag my drives ever cept for accessing data to start apps. Vista is a resourse hog and XP simply works.
If I were you (and I've been in a similar situation) I'd spend my money on as much main memory as possible to try to eliminate swapping as much as possible (given budgetary and operating system constraints). The i-RAM is a very expensive way to buy additional virtual memory. It's what... £100 or so just for the board? That's more than the price of an extra 1GB of main memory.
The difference between a 1GB and 2GB main memory is quite dramatic in my experience, unless you're running some seriously obnoxiously memory-hungry applications. A fair few apps will happily use 1GB+, not very many will want to use ~2GB.
I've run an XP system for many many months with 2GB of main memory with swapping *turned off* (I did this to reduce the noise of a swapping hard-drive). It coped with everything including Photoshop, plus a number of reasonably resource-intensive games (including BF2) without even requiring a swap file. It was only Oblivion that pushed it over the edge and made me re-enable swap (the downside with no swap is that if the OS runs out of main memory it tends to crash of course).
For myself I'd be tempted to get 4GB right now if it wasn't that ~1GB would go to waste under XP, and 3GB is a messy fit DIMM-wise. If I had Vista (64-bit) right now I'd get 4GB in a heart-beat.
So what I'm getting at is that rather than trying to make your swap run faster I'd suggest that your first strategy should be to make your system swap as little as possible by cramming in as much main memory as you can afford and your OS will let you use. Secondly wait until you've used your games on a 2, 3 or 4GB system before deciding that a faster swap device is actually necessary, you may be pleasantly surprised by the difference that extra gig of main memory makes.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
The difference between a 1GB and 2GB main memory is quite dramatic in my experience, unless you're running some seriously obnoxiously memory-hungry applications. A fair few apps will happily use 1GB+, not very many will want to use ~2GB.
I've run an XP system for many many months with 2GB of main memory with swapping *turned off* (I did this to reduce the noise of a swapping hard-drive). It coped with everything including Photoshop, plus a number of reasonably resource-intensive games (including BF2) without even requiring a swap file. It was only Oblivion that pushed it over the edge and made me re-enable swap (the downside with no swap is that if the OS runs out of main memory it tends to crash of course
).For myself I'd be tempted to get 4GB right now if it wasn't that ~1GB would go to waste under XP, and 3GB is a messy fit DIMM-wise. If I had Vista (64-bit) right now I'd get 4GB in a heart-beat.
So what I'm getting at is that rather than trying to make your swap run faster I'd suggest that your first strategy should be to make your system swap as little as possible by cramming in as much main memory as you can afford and your OS will let you use. Secondly wait until you've used your games on a 2, 3 or 4GB system before deciding that a faster swap device is actually necessary, you may be pleasantly surprised by the difference that extra gig of main memory makes.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
If I were you (and I've been in a similar situation) I'd spend my money on as much main memory as possible to try to eliminate swapping as much as possible (given budgetary and operating system constraints). The i-RAM is a very expensive way to buy additional virtual memory. It's what... £100 or so just for the board? That's more than the price of an extra 1GB of main memory.
The difference between a 1GB and 2GB main memory is quite dramatic in my experience, unless you're running some seriously obnoxiously memory-hungry applications. A fair few apps will happily use 1GB+, not very many will want to use ~2GB.
I've run an XP system for many many months with 2GB of main memory with swapping *turned off* (I did this to reduce the noise of a swapping hard-drive). It coped with everything including Photoshop, plus a number of reasonably resource-intensive games (including BF2) without even requiring a swap file. It was only Oblivion that pushed it over the edge and made me re-enable swap (the downside with no swap is that if the OS runs out of main memory it tends to crash of course
For myself I'd be tempted to get 4GB right now if it wasn't that ~1GB would go to waste under XP, and 3GB is a messy fit DIMM-wise. If I had Vista (64-bit) right now I'd get 4GB in a heart-beat.
So what I'm getting at is that rather than trying to make your swap run faster I'd suggest that your first strategy should be to make your system swap as little as possible by cramming in as much main memory as you can afford and your OS will let you use. Secondly wait until you've used your games on a 2, 3 or 4GB system before deciding that a faster swap device is actually necessary, you may be pleasantly surprised by the difference that extra gig of main memory makes.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
I had thought of that too, but the cost of getting 2 2gb sticks is way out of my range. and 4 1gb sticks just means more troubleshooting for me if I have issues when I start to OC the rig. Going C2D. And for me, here in the US, the card is around 120, where I saw it anyways, and 1gb ddr is under 100.
Here are my options cost wise
Card - 125(I'll call it this in case I have to go else where to get it)
1gb ddr - 66 or 132 depending on if i go 2gb(based on pc3200 prices)
2gb ddr PC6400 - 181
Thats 372 to 438
4gb striaght up would run 362(4 1gb sticks) plus time for stability issus if they arise or 350 for 2 GB sticks. and with these I'd have to worry about if my board would support them and/or the brand i purchased. All headaches i'd rather avoid when what i would really rather be doing is gaming shortly after building and setting up.
Hmmm, OK yes I hadn't really considered the OC'ing side of things (not my kettle of fish).
I have to say that looked at from 30,000 feet the whole thing sounds a little strange. To increase performance by a few tens of percent you want to overclock. To overclock stably you need to limit the amount of main memory you have. Not having enough memory forces your machine to swap. Swapping shoots your performance in the love-nuggets in real-world, memory-intensive applications thus relieving you of all of your over-clocking gains plus some more (iRAM or no iRAM, iRAM is still dog slow compared to having enough memory in the first place).
Are you sure that an OC'd rig with iRAM swap will actually be faster than a stock-clocked rig with twice as much main memory if and when the iRAM comes in to play? (on average, less stuttery and all that, synthetic benchmarks excluded)
I have to say that looked at from 30,000 feet the whole thing sounds a little strange. To increase performance by a few tens of percent you want to overclock. To overclock stably you need to limit the amount of main memory you have. Not having enough memory forces your machine to swap. Swapping shoots your performance in the love-nuggets in real-world, memory-intensive applications thus relieving you of all of your over-clocking gains plus some more (iRAM or no iRAM, iRAM is still dog slow compared to having enough memory in the first place).
Are you sure that an OC'd rig with iRAM swap will actually be faster than a stock-clocked rig with twice as much main memory if and when the iRAM comes in to play? (on average, less stuttery and all that, synthetic benchmarks excluded)
Actually depending on which proc I go with, waiting to see if intel reduces prices this month or not as was report 2 months ago. C2D are very good OCers and give you better than a few tens of percent increase. E6300 can clock way higher than a E6800E and performs as such as well. At stock speeds, that are seperated by more than a few tens of percent. Same with the E6400 and 6600. The E6700 does aswell, but has the added bonus of no locked multipliers. And while a E6800 would be nice, 900+ bones is way outa my price range.
As to performance in concerns of stuttering and such, who knows. I'm doing this based on stability, OC ability and compatability. If I go with what I know will work instead of going with something I hope will work, I'll take what I know as I've done the hope thing before and have been left waiting for parts before I could enjoy gaming fun. Granted nothing is set in stone yet and the above sound wierd concidering what I asked at the begining of this thread. But seeing as how only a few reviews were done with the i-RAM and all of them were comparing it to HDD in OS environments and not as swapfile disks in gaming ones.
Hey, there would be a cool review for the guys here to do. See if the i-RAM used as a swapfile drive helps to improve game performance.
